The Power of Mentorship for African Women in Digital Health

The Power of Mentorship for African Women in Digital Health

AWiDH Mentor, Daisy Isiaho has been growing immensely through interactions with mentors in her life, she says. For the 30 year old Kenyan, people who believed in her vision and encouraged her to think big but also were critical with her, were the ones who helped her on her entrepreneurship journey in the digital health space creating a sustainable and scalable business model. “Mentorship opportunities are rare but transformative when they happen”.

Sometimes statistics tell the truth as blatant as it is. “One percent of african women in stem have access to mentorship”, says Erica Penfold, program manager based in Johannesburg. She opened the Webinar titled ‘African Women leading in Digital Health: The Power of Mentorship’ in mid January which brought together participants from the mentorship program organised by African Women in Digital Health (AWiDH) in 2024.

Being a mentor herself now, Isiaho says “I gained as much as I have given”. The exchange brought fresh perspectives and challenged her thinking. “Their questions help you to refine your own innovations.” In 2021, the IT-expert Daisy Isiaho co-founded the Kenyan digital health start up Zuri health with a “vision to provide quality, affordable, on-demand healthcare accessible with a simple swipe”. Isiaho has been sharing experiences and learnings from her entrepreneurship journey in digital health as a mentor to 2024 cohort of the AWiDH mentorship program.

The three young women participating in the webinar are all pushing boundaries in the digital health space and are connected by one thing: their passion to make an impact in people’s health. And they are determined to not let (gender-) stereotypes come in between them and their goals. The three women also span a net across the African continent, from East, to West to North, and they testify to the power of mentoship.

Another statistic shows why the AWiDH’s mentorship program is important: “Women are receiving less than 7 percent of venture capital”. The program is designed “so that african women can better participate and lead in digital health space”, explains Khadidja Diakhaby, AWiDH Program Manager, from SpeakUp Africa, who runs the mentorship program.

One of Isiaho’s mentees who kept asking curious questions, was Victory Ifeanyichukwu from Nigeria. After finishing medical school and being involved in marketing activities, she co-founded ‘MedVax Health’ in Lagos, which intends to make health information and services more available to underserved populations. Initial trials have shown increased vaccination rates and high user engagement. For her, the mentorship has been a push in confidence. Operating in the male dominated digital health space can be intimidating. “As a women you are easily disapproved, judged or doubted when you are in tech”, she says. For her, the mentorship program also helped the MedVax Health team align their business. They are a young team of pharmacists and doctors. The questions that came up during the sessions helped them refine questions of how to reach the target audience and make them engage with the service – even if it is on platform like WhatsApp and not neccessarily on their own app only.

The Egyptian physician Inas Abdelwahed, an alumni of the AWiDH Mentorship Program and the Kofi Annan Global Health Leadership Program, with her app ‘Otida’ bridges gaps in current diabetes care models by offering an interdisciplinary, patient-centric approach that integrates medical, nutritional, and lifestyle support. “There are not many role models for young female founders”, Abdelwahed says. As a mentee in the the AwiDH program, she cherished the exchange with the mentors as well with the mentees, especially when they had come together for a bootcamp in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. It was valuable to her, that challenges were analysed from a gender lens and provided “appropriate solutions for you as a woman in a male dominated field”. For Inas Abdelwahed, connecting with like minded entrepreneurs through the mentorship program feels like creating a movement to overcome bias against women. “We need to be skilled, prepared and resilient to the criticism we will receive”, she says. Through the program, she feels better prepared for the challenges she will face in building her digital health solutions.

As questions from the audience centered around tips for people who are new to the field, the three digital health experts with their various backgrounds agreed, that the most important things is to have a vision and to get going. Along the way, the crucial question for entrepreneurs to ask themselves is “Why am I doing this?”. And when they get stuck, Isiaho advises: “Asking for guidance is a sign of strength and not weakness!”.

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